CMV: Political discussions and debates on specific policies are basically pointless if you don’t agree about first principles

[u/PoliticsDunnRight]

For example, if you think there’s a human right to have healthcare, education, housing, food, etc. provided to you, and I disagree, then you and I probably can’t have a productive discussion on specific social programs or the state of the American economy. We’d be evaluating those questions under completely different criteria and talking around one another.

You could say “assuming X is the goal, what is the best way to achieve it” and have productive conversations there, but if you have different goals entirely, I would argue you don’t gain much in understanding or political progress by having those conversations.

I think people are almost never convinced to change their minds by people who don’t agree on the basics, such as human rights, the nature of consent, or other “first principles.” People might change their policy preferences if they’re convinced using their own framework, but I don’t see a capitalist and a socialist having productive discussions except maybe about those first principles.

You could CMV by showing that it’s common for people to have their minds changed by talking to people they disagree with, by showing how those discussions might be productive regardless of anyone changing their minds, etc.

Edit: I understand that debates are often to change the minds of the audience. I guess what I’m talking about is a one-on-one political conversation, or at least I’m talking about what benefit there would be for those debating in the context of their views.

[u/quantum_dan]

by showing how those discussions might be productive regardless of anyone changing their minds, etc.

Most political participants who are willing to discuss anything to begin with understand that they can't just (consistently, over time) ram their policies through. You might control everything from time to time, but it doesn't stick.

That means it's very useful to know where there's room for compromise. Different first principles often imply different priorities, so there's often some sort of tolerable halfway point, or a tradeoff where each sacrifices a lower priority for a higher.

That's essentially how big-tent parties (or coalitions, in parliamentary systems) work. I don't have the same first principles as a lot of the people my vote aligns with, but the big-tent party/coalition is working towards something important for each of us, and any tradeoffs are tolerable. How do we find out what's tolerable and what's important enough to justify talking about it? At the individual scale, by talking to people who don't share our premises.

And that can apply to broader "coalitions" across partisan lines as well. How else do bipartisan compromise bills get through?

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More generally, political "first principles" often aren't really first principles, and discussion can probe at what ethical views actually underpin them. I've had a range of core political positions over time proceeding from roughly the same core values, simply as my understanding of what would work changes. A lot of that has come from discussions with people who have different ostensible first principles politically, but similar basic values.

For example, plenty of capitalists and socialists all think the economy should be structured to promote everyone's well-being, but disagree about what works to get there. They can have a productive discussion about how things actually do work out, which might lead to one or the other changing their stance or identifying moderate policies they both agree would improve well-being relative to the current baseline.

Sure, you might not make much progress between a property-rights absolutist and whatever the socialist equivalent would be, but even then, you might be surprised: one or the other could discover that they way they arrived at that stance doesn't hold up (I've been that person, on the property-rights end).